Native American beadwork, photographed at the Cultural Resources Center, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.

“The first sickness is fear,” said Marilyn Youngbird, a traditional Native American healer from the Arikara/Hidatsa tribal groups in North Dakota.

“When we are afraid, there are chemical changes in the mind and body that can affect everything. These changes can produce every kind of disease,” said Ms. Youngbird, at a conference on Indigenous Healing Traditions in the Americas, sponsored by Pro-Cultura, a not for profit organization committed to cross-cultural exchange between physicians and healers from diverse traditions.

“Fear is the greatest sickness. When you fear, you lack self-identity. You lack spiritual identity. You lose yourself.”

Guilt and self-judgement are next on Youngbird’s list of “diagnoses.” They are nearly as crippling as fear. “It is time to be quiet and find your truth. Then forgive yourself. That is medicine: Forgiving ourselves. Honoring ourselves. Loving ourselves. These are real medicines, and everyone has them. The greatest gift you can give yourself is forgiveness.”

Ms. Youngbird has worked for many years at the interface of Native American medicine and conventional Western medicine, training health care providers in working with trauma and serious illness at Dartmouth, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other major institutions nationwide.

Specific healing modalities and in fact healers themselves are certainly important, but in her eyes, they are merely intermediaries. Ultimately, everyone heals themselves. The healers and the methods, whatever they may be, simply facilitate. “You are your own healer. You have the power to know what to do to heal yourself. Air, water, fire, food, minerals, love. These are the true medicines.”

Youngbird’s views on healing are rooted in a vision, common to many indigenous peoples, of a purposeful universe, one where nothing is meaningless and everything happens ultimately for the right reason, though that may not seem apparent. “There are no mistakes on this Earth. Everything is happening the way it is supposed to. If you do something and it doesn’t turn out right and you keep on doing it, it is a sign that you need to forgive yourself of something.”

The importance of intention as an essential component of healing and health care—regardless of the specific “modality” being used—echoed throughout the conference, which brought together traditional practitioners from Alaska to Peru, as well as conventionally-trained physicians and psychologists.

Tieraona Low Dog, MD, an allopathic physician and traditional herbalist from New Mexico, shared Ms. Youngbird’s essential orientation. “The number one diagnosis in my clinic is soul pain. And Saint John’s Wort won’t fix that. Nor will Prozac. The things that really ail us are things that compassion, warmth and humanity will cure.”

In this era of Orange Alerts and “Shock and Awe” airstrikes, Youngbird’s and Low Dog’s views—which are increasingly supportable with data from the field of psychoneuroimmunology—are well worth keeping in mind.

The healing principles Ms. Youngbird embodies are a key to restoring individual doctor-patient relationships. But they are just as applicable to vastly larger spheres of human activity, including the current global crisis.

She reminded her audience, “We are the light. Shine where darkness reigns. Shine for those who don’t know who they are. Shine over the discrimination. Try your best to overcome the divide and conquer that has come between peoples. Let my grandchildren be your grandchildren. Let yours be mine. Let us not wait for others to tell us what our medicine is.”